Ashby vs Lever Pricing and AI Screening

Short answer: Ashby prints a price and Lever does not. Ashby's All-In-One Foundations plan runs $300 to $900 a month for companies up to 100 employees, set by five headcount bands. Lever sells by quote only, and Vendr contract data puts its median buyer at $15,400 a year. Ashby suits fast-growing teams that want analytics and one system, Lever suits teams that want a recruiting CRM bundled with the ATS, and neither one ranks your inbound pile as its main job.

Both are applicant tracking systems with a built-in CRM, and both turn up when a company outgrows a spreadsheet or a basic tool. Ashby is independent. Lever belongs to Employ Inc., which also owns JazzHR and Jobvite. We read Ashby's pricing calculator on August 25, 2026 and confirmed its default display and its annual discount again on October 31, 2026. We read Lever's pricing page on August 31, 2026 and again on October 31. Where a figure is our arithmetic, the text says so.

Ashby vs Lever at a glance

How much does Ashby cost?

Ashby's Foundations plan has a working calculator on its pricing page. You pick a company size band and a payment term, and it returns a monthly total. The five bands we read were $300 for 1 to 10 employees, $400 for 11 to 25, $500 for 26 to 50, $700 for 51 to 75 and $900 for 76 to 100. Ashby says annual commitments qualify for a 10% discount.

One trap: the calculator loads with the 11 to 25 band selected, so the number you see on arrival is $400. Many articles repeat it as the entry price. It is the second band of five. A company crossing from 50 to 51 employees goes from $500 to $700 a month, a 40% jump, so check your headcount plan before you sign. For the full band table and the credit arithmetic, see Ashby pricing.

How much does Lever cost?

Lever publishes no rate. Its pricing page says pricing is available upon request and every button leads to a quote form. The best public anchor is Vendr, which brokers software purchases: its median Lever buyer pays $15,400 a year across 318 purchases, with a range from $6,714 to $51,864 and an average saving of 16% against the first quote. The spread matters more than the median. The same product sells for roughly eight times more at the top than at the bottom, so negotiating counts.

Lever has also stopped selling named tiers. There is a Core Platform, and add-ons sold separately. Read the AI wording closely: the Core Platform describes AI-powered capabilities, while AI Screening by VONQ is a separate add-on that pre-screens applicants through your career site. Ask which one your quote includes. Our Lever pricing page covers the quote in more detail.

Ashby vs Lever for AI screening

Both can help with inbound review, but they bill it differently. Ashby's AI application review, fraud detection and talent rediscovery draw from one shared pool of AI credits. Foundations counts credits per month, and the paid-up plans count them per seat per year, so a team that upgrades should check it is not trading a monthly allowance for a smaller annual one. Lever either includes AI-powered screening in the base platform or sells the VONQ add-on, depending on what the quote says.

In both cases screening is a feature inside a system of record. If the problem you are solving is that a few hundred resumes arrive for every role and nobody reads them all, you are buying a whole recruiting platform to fix one step.

Which should you pick?

For technical roles, a resume often says little about how someone actually works. If you hire engineers, a service that lets you hire developers by skill instead of by resume can sit alongside either ATS for that one stream.

What if you only need to rank inbound resumes?

Prescreener is not an ATS. It reads every inbound resume, applies your criteria and ranks the pile with written evidence per criterion, and a person makes the decision. It never auto-rejects. It works beside Ashby, Lever or whichever system holds your candidates. Plans are $199, $499, $1,290 or $2,490 a month by applicant volume, or half that billed yearly. Starter is about $99 a month billed yearly for 1,000 resumes ranked monthly. Use bulk applicant screening for a backlog, or application scoring software for criterion-based ranking.

Questions to ask both vendors

Ask Ashby which headcount band applies on your renewal date and how many AI credits sit in each plan. Ask Lever for a line-by-line quote that separates the Core Platform from each add-on, and whether AI screening is included or the VONQ add-on. Ask both what a mid-contract headcount change does to the price, and for the contract term in writing.

Is Ashby cheaper than Lever?

For a company under 100 employees, Ashby is easier to price because it prints $300 to $900 a month. Lever sells by quote, and Vendr's median is $15,400 a year. At 50 employees Ashby's published rate works out to $6,000 a year before any annual discount, which is our arithmetic. Lever's real price depends on negotiation.

Does Lever publish its pricing?

No. Lever's pricing page says pricing is available upon request, and every button leads to a quote request. Third-party sites quote per-seat figures, but Lever does not publish them, so treat those as unverified until your own quote arrives.

Does Ashby have a free trial?

Ashby does not advertise a free trial. Each plan on its pricing page carries a Get in Touch button, and its pricing page offers a 10% discount for annual commitments. Plan on a demo and a quote even for Foundations.

Which ATS is better for AI resume screening?

Both include AI features, billed differently. Ashby meters AI application review through a shared credit pool, and Lever offers AI-powered screening in the platform plus a separate VONQ add-on. If ranking inbound resumes is your main need, a dedicated screening tool costs less than switching your whole ATS.